Going Green, Thanks to My Daughter

“Reduce, reuse and recycle,” our daughter recently learned in Girl Scouts. We actually have been recycling for a long time: paper, plastics, aluminum cans, and glass, including our fair share of wine bottles ;-). We fill up our recycling bins faster than they can be emptied. (We in Las Vegas are fortunate to have curbside recycling; unfortunately it is only picked up every two weeks and the bins just aren’t large enough to accommodate our family of three). We’ve also gotten some of the “new” energy saving light bulbs and are slowly phasing out our old-fashioned ones.

I’ve even tried those reusable grocery bags. I enjoy cooking and we eat at home all but two or three nights a month, so as a consequence, we accumulate a large supply of plastic grocery bags. We use the bags to line the garbage can under the sink and the shredder in the office (and for poop-scooping in the back yard after our dog goes out – sorry no photo available for that one). But we barely make a dent in our stockpile and it grows larger every week, nearly taking over its corner in the pantry. And to top it off, I recently learned we can’t put these grocery bags in with our recyclable plastics: it seems the recycling company doesn’t take them because they “take up too much room” (that’s what was reported on the local evening news, I didn’t make it up). So using reusable grocery bags makes a lot of sense. I can help out the environment, reduce my bag stockpile and actually reach the stuff in my pantry.

I logically put my reusable bags in the back of my SUV so that they would be handy when I went to the grocery store. It turns out they were not handy enough: I kept forgetting them. Each time I went shopping, I’d remember the bags, folded neatly and stored under the cargo net, just about the time I was pushing my shopping cart up to the check-out lane. Oh well, I’d tell myself, I’ll remember them next time. Yeah, right. All I had done was turn myself into sort of a bag chauffeur, squiring my lovely reusable bags all about town but never taking them out. I realized I was not the only one with this problem when I spotted a sign over the entry to Whole Foods with a drawing of an elephant and a reminder to “remember your reusable bags.”

My 9-year-old daughter came up with a brilliant solution. Hang the reusable bags on a hook by the door where I will see them as I am leaving the house! She got out a cute wooden coat hook that she’d painted for me two years ago for Mother’s Day, which was still in the pantry hiding behind the plastic bag stockpile awaiting its destiny. I got the nails and hammer; my daughter got the reusable bags from my car, and problem solved. The reusable bags now hang right by (1) the garage-door switch that I have to press to get out of the garage, and (2) the deadbolt that I lock when I leave the house. I can’t miss them.

I am proud to say that I am now actually using my reusable bags. What a concept.